What’s new in 4.1
PaywallProject 4.1 lets an AI app help with subscriber support, adds refunds and subscription actions to wp-admin, reminds readers who leave checkout, and protects e-edition PDFs.
PHP2Shell: How PaywallProject Sites Were Protected Before a Fix Existed
Two critical PHP flaws put every WordPress site at risk in October. Sites hosted by PaywallProject were shielded before a fix existed and patched the same day. Publishers had nothing to do.
What’s new in 4.0
PaywallProject 4.0 adds recurring coupons, free plans by email domain, Newsletter Glue sync, profile photos and AI Shield, and makes Connect with Stripe the one way to take payments.
How to Block AI Bots Without Blocking Google: A Guide for News Publishers
AI companies send bots to local news sites every day. Some copy (scrape) your articles to train their AI models. Others summarize your stories inside ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar tools, so readers get the news without ever clicking through to…
How a Small-Town Newspaper Built Digital Subscription Revenue
A newspaper in a town of 758 people, in a county of 17,000, started selling online subscriptions with PaywallProject. It began with virtually no online subscribers. $2,500+ A month in subscription revenue, up from almost nothing at launch 3× Email…
Should You Stop Printing? A Publisher’s Guide to the Print to Digital Transition
When should a newspaper stop printing? Most advice says “it depends.” We think there’s a clearer answer: stop when your paid digital subscriptions can carry the paper. The best reason to end print is that something better has taken its…
Newspaper CMS Comparison: PaywallProject (WordPress) vs. BLOX CMS vs. Surf CMS
Choosing a newspaper CMS is one of the highest-stakes technology decisions a local publisher makes. It touches everything from how fast a reporter can file a breaking story to whether the paper collects a single dollar in digital subscription revenue.…
How Local News Publishers Can Cut Subscriber Churn With Newsletters
Subscriber churn is quiet. It doesn’t announce itself. One month a reader is engaged, and a few months later they’re gone, and most publishers never find out why. Here’s a number worth sitting with. A publisher losing 10% of subscribers…
How to Design a Newspaper Website That Actually Grows Revenue
Most newspaper website redesigns fail before they launch. Not because the design is bad. But because the publisher is solving the wrong problem. They hire a designer, pick a theme, and spend three months obsessing over font choices and color…
Why SEO Is No Longer Enough: The Rise of AI Overviews (And What Publishers Can Do About It)
Google just had a record quarter. Alphabet’s yearly revenue crossed $400 billion for the first time, and search revenue grew 17% in the quarter. The company says AI is driving an “expansionary moment” for Search. For publishers, it’s the opposite.…